Thoughs on relays, solenois, valves ...

BachPhi

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BachPhi
Join Date
Dec 2007
Location
Los Alamos
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In the manufacturing world, we deal with many devices like relays, solenoids, valves ....

Now, I know it's the first day of April and Trump is in the office, and being "green" may not be the buzz word in the current political atmosphere, but what if green also mean money saving? You can also carry on and on with continuous improvement ideas to your boss as well. it's win-win thing.

For each of these devices, we can put them into low power saving mode, and therefore we can typically save more than 60% of energy usage.

Solenoid_Saving_Engery.png
 
A penny here, a penny there, it adds up. Yes, lower power consumption is something to consider.

The solenoid valve manufacturer spent lots of money coming out with the Next Generation of solenoid valves whose claim to fame is energy savings, approaching the 0.5W level.

A couple white papers on the topic relating to solenoid valves:
http://www.asco.com/ASCO%20Asset%20Library/asco-low-power-valves-complete-catalog.pdf

http://www.asco.com/ASCO Asset Library/asco-optimizing-power-management-white-paper.pdf

The catalog is here:
http://www.asco.com/ASCO Asset Library/asco-low-power-valves-complete-catalog.pdf

The other place energy savings comes up is in valve positioners in process plants because most positioners continuously bleed instrument air. The Siemens PS2 uses instrument air only to when changing position, it uses none while idle.
 
Last edited:
danw said:
A penny here, a penny there, it adds up. Yes, lower power consumption is something to consider.

The solenoid valve manufacturer spent lots of money coming out with the Next Generation of solenoid valves whose claim to fame is energy savings, approaching the 0.5W level.

A couple white papers on the topic relating to solenoid valves:
http://www.asco.com/ASCO%20Asset%20Library/asco-low-power-valves-complete-catalog.pdf

http://www.asco.com/ASCO Asset Library/asco-optimizing-power-management-white-paper.pdf

The catalog is here:
http://www.asco.com/ASCO Asset Library/asco-low-power-valves-complete-catalog.pdf

The other place energy savings comes up is in valve positioners in process plants because most positioners continuously bleed instrument air. The Siemens PS2 uses instrument air only to when changing position, it uses none while idle.
Click to expand...

I agree that there are measures that can (and should) be taken at the design level to reduce unneeded power consumption.

That said, I'm drawing a blank when attempting to envision how to put relays or solenoids into "power saving mode". If my process requires that solenoids and/or relays be energized, then I wouldn't consider reducing the voltage applied to their coils simply because they haven't changed states for the past 5 minutes.
 
Nice! I did not know about the new Asco power saving product. I wish the white paper describe a little more on the new switching circuit design. TI has a new chip DRV110 as recent as this month that doing the low power saving mode.

What I have not seen is some new boards that can do for multiple devices
 
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Bit_Bucket_07 said:
I agree that there are measures that can (and should) be taken at the design level to reduce unneeded power consumption.

That said, I'm drawing a blank when attempting to envision how to put relays or solenoids into "power saving mode". If my process requires that solenoids and/or relays be energized, then I wouldn't consider reducing the voltage applied to their coils simply because they haven't changed states for the past 5 minutes.
Click to expand...

You need to read the whitepaper to understand the basic underlying operation of electromagnetic devices.
 
If that is a concern, there are double-acting retentive valves as well as polarized relays long available on the market that do not require power being applied constantly to maintain the current state.

The downside: now you need two control circuits instead of one. And of course the usual considerations regarding what happens when the system loses power, how would it recover and so on.

"Green" is nice but always comes with a cost.
 
I thought it was pretty standard these days to have two stage solenoids in valves contactors and brakes? The switching is built into the device.
 
99% of the contactors I use these days are the DC electronic coil type - which means that they have an R/C network or similar built into the coil to provide for a big spike to pull the contactor in, but then have quite a low "hold-in" current. Not sure what it takes to pull them in, but once a schneider contactor anywhere up to 18.5kW is in, it only takes 2.4W to hold it there.
 

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